Mystic Dreamer Tarot (Book & Cards)

Imagine strolling through a dark wood, the silver moonlight bathing your path in an ethereal glow. Now is the time to call upon your intuition and explore hidden realms of imagination and creativity. What secret messages do your dreams hold?

You can see pictures of the cards on a number of tarot deck websites, so I won’t spend a lot of time on them here. If you’re an art deck collector, this is probably already on your LustList. If not, you want to know how it *reads*.

First, there’s no nudity in this deck, which to many readers who read at public fairs, is a huge relief. (The Lovers are semi-nude, but tastefully photoshopped). It’s a darkish deck–moons appear in every card–but the overall tone is not particularly shadowy or bleak to me, as many ‘darker’ decks are. The symbolism is strongly reliant on RWS, so owners of other ‘standard’ decks can probably jump right in with readings. Some differences exist–the Hanged Man, for example, has both legs straight instead of the standard ‘figure four’, the Devil doesn’t have a scary guy with horns–but all in all your RWS deck skills will transfer pretty seamlessly. Many symbols repeat throughout the deck, like waterfalls and ravens, that are not standard, but do lead to fascinating connections in a more intuitive-style reading.

The deck is heavily female–in case the big PINK box it comes in doesn’t give that away. It features women more than men in the cards themselves–the swords suit, for example, is almost entirely female. The book it comes with is nice–not the LWB, but a paperback glossy covered affair. The explanations for each card are solid, and not very ‘out there’ or far from standard interpretations. The real treasure of the book comes in the ‘use your intuition’ questions for each card.

This is my first photo-collage deck, and I like it a lot more than I’d expected. I’d hoped it would be a bit more androgynous in appeal and pictures. But I can’t fault a deck that gives good, solid readings and pushes a reader or a tarot-meditator to further their intuitive skills.

I waited with anticipation for this deck to come out, watching it’s progress on the artists website. The artwork is lovely, unfortunately you still need to go to the mentioned website to appreciate it. The cards have an awful greenish-brown border which makes the images smaller, so that much of the detail is lost. The colors also seem muddy in comparison to the original art. For instance on the Star card, the detail of the rocks is completely gone and looks like a black mass. On the 4 of cups card, there is a castle, burro and stag in the background but you need a magnifying glass to see them. Unfortunately, this is true of quite a few other cards. This could have all been fixed by Llewelyn, who should have eliminated the border entirely and perhaps even made the cards bigger. Barbara Moore is an excellent writer, but I find her “use your intuition” questions in place of the cards interpretation rather bothersome. This is an art deck, with design based on the artists aesthetics and the availability of stock photography. There is no huge deep meaning behind trivial details such as yellow flowers. Which is really OK; there are plenty of traditional Tarot decks where the details truly are significant, so if that is what you are looking for, this is not the deck for you.